48 The EconomistAugust 10th 2019
1B
rowsing peacefullyat a waterhole,
the herd of two dozen elephants seems
oblivious to the car that has stopped 100
metres away and disgorged three visitors to
gawp at them. The vast expanse of the Ka-
fue National Park in western Zambia is qui-
et and deserted of other people. These hu-
mans are just curious, but potential killers
would be hard to stop. An anti-poaching
unit based about 20km away tries to pro-
tect the animals in the park’s 22,000 square
kilometres, with just 27 rangers working
shifts, and a few jeeps and rifles. Given the
odds, and the rewards poaching brings,
they have been remarkably successful.
The park is home to leopards, rare ante-
lope, hippos, pangolins, aardvarks and
crocodiles as well as elephants, of which
Kafue had about 60,000 in the 1960s, when
it also had one of the world’s largest popu-
lations of black rhinos. But in the 1980s, the
very last black rhino was poached. The ele-
phant population has dwindled to 4,000.Elephants will be high on the agenda
when the Convention on International
Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna
and Flora (cites), an agreement signed to
date by 183 countries, convenes its triennial
“conference of the parties” (cop)—its deci-
sion-making forum—in Geneva from Au-
gust 17th-28th. wwf, a wildlife charity, esti-
mates that around 20,000 African
elephants are killed by people every year.
The animals’ meat, hides and, above all,
tusks are money-spinners. East Asia is the
biggest market for ivory and for many ille-
gally traded products, such as animal parts
used in traditional Chinese medicine
(tcm)—tiger bones, rhino horns, pangolin
scales—or in its cuisine—pangolin meat,
for example. In July the authorities in Sin-
gapore seized 8.8 tonnes, about 300 ele-
phants’-worth, of ivory, along with 11.9
tonnes of pangolin scales, from some
2,000 of the anteaters, the world’s most
widely trafficked endangered mammal.The annual profits of the trade in illegal
wildlife products are estimated at between
$7bn at the low end and $23bn. This makes
it the fourth-most profitable criminal traf-
ficking business, with links to others—
slavery, narcotics and the arms trade.
On the agenda in Geneva is a proposal
from Zambia to shift its elephants from
cites’ Appendix I, which bans virtually all
trade, as the species is deemed at threat of
extinction, to the less restrictive Appendix
II, to allow some trade, for example, in
hunting trophies. Botswana, Namibia and
Zimbabwe also want to trade some stock-
piled ivory. Zambia argues that its elephant
population has stabilised, at about 27,000
animals—just one-tenth of the number 50
years ago, but a marked increase on the es-
timated 18,000 that survived the poaching
epidemic of the 1970s and 1980s. The ani-
mals have enough space and are not split
into unsustainable subpopulations.It’s the people, stupid
Many local people would be quite happy to
see elephant numbers decline. These
beasts, protected in reserves and national
parks such as Kafue, which cover around
30% of the country, can be destructive,
trampling farmland and wrecking homes.
Everybody involved in conservation
agrees that the best protection for wildlife
would be for local people to have an inter-Illegal wildlife tradeWhere the wild things are going
BEIJING AND KAFUE
In the battle against the trade in endangered species, the criminals still have the
upper handInternational